Guest players in String Quartet mesh beautifully

By Travis Rivers
Correspondent
The Spokesman-Review
Oct. 9, 2006

The Spokane String Quartet began its 2006-07 season Sunday at The Met with a whole new violin section. "So, that is only two people," you say. Still it is half the players, a cause of much concern to chamber music audiences.

There was no need for worry. It was apparent from the first sounds of Mozart's youthful String Quartet in F major that the new players – violinists Julie Ayer and Misha Rosenker (replacing Kelly Farris and Tana Bland) – meshed excellently with quartet regulars violist Jeannette Wee-Yang and cellist Helen Byrne. And the remainder of the program found all four well attuned to one another, both technically and musically.

Audiences rarely get a chance to hear Mozart's early quartets, and they are charmers. The work played Sunday was written when Mozart was only 16 in Milan, where the composer was on a concert tour. The quartet has the easy-going songful flavor of one of those Italian serenatas or divertimentos that Italian composers turned out by the dozens.

The ensemble Sunday brought both precision and naturalness to Mozart's transparent little masterpiece. The work is dominated by the first violin part, which takes a prima donna role in a work conspicuously operatic. (What work of Mozart's isn't?) Ayer, like any good prima donna, knew exactly when to push and when to hold back. She and the other players lent vitality to the work, providing nudging accents, subtly gauged dynamics, and a dance-like rhythmic flexibility at the ends of sections and movements.

Hugo Wolf's "Italian Serenade" gave an exuberant ending to the concert's first half. Wolf is known for his many songs for solo voice and piano. He wanted very much to write large-scale instrumental music, but his heart lay with the song. The "Italian Serenade" was a delight in its Mendelssohnian lightness and speed. The quartet players brought the same transparency to Wolf as they had to Mozart, plus the right measure of late romantic intensity to give a bite to Wolf's textural and harmonic quirks.

The big work of the afternoon was Brahms' String Quartet in A minor, a work of symphonic scope and the bittersweet melancholy that is typical of Brahms. This work demands warmth of tone and careful balance among all four parts. No dominant prima donnas here. When Brahms passed skittery staccato passages from one player to the next in the third movement, these four sounded like a single player performing on one supersized instrument.

I particularly admired the genial exchanges between pairs of players in this work and was especially struck by Ayer and Wee-Yang's duet at the beginning of the slow movement.

Farris is taking a well-deserved year's leave of absence from the quartet, and Bland a shorter maternity leave. But they left the Spokane String Quartet in eight very capable hands Sunday afternoon. And the remainder of the season, with a new guest first violinist for each concert, promises similar happy musical surprises from the group.

[Home] [About Us] [Concerts] [Reviews] [Donate] [Contact Us]

Spokane Chamber Music Association
P.O. Box 3741
Spokane, WA 99220-3741